JoJo Siwa is known as the happy, cheerful, and pink girl. We commonly know her for her role on “Dance Moms”. After her “Dance Moms” days, JoJo moved on to create music and her own brand. Little girls in 2014 were wearing “JoJo bows”, with the colorful ribbons and pounds of glitter. JoJo’s brand is MEANT for KIDS. Kids are easily influenced and are masters at mimicking behaviors. Which with JoJo’s new rebrand, that might backfire completely.
Junior Emily Detmer said,” When you’re an advocate for young children you have to think about your decisions more and how parents would react because once a parent doesn’t like you then they’ll stop your children from liking you. Then the parents will say that this isn’t a good group.”
Recently, JoJo has rebranded to something more dark and edgy. With her new music video “Karma”, JoJo has flipped her brand to be more “adult”. With the scandals going around, her new pop group: “XOMG POP!” was mentioned upon the rise of her controversy. As well as two videos of her defending Colleen Balinger and James Charles who were accused child predators.
Junior Harley Anderson,” I have neer met a single person who defends a pedophile. Although, I think she enjoys the attention that she gets from having all of these hot takes, it’ll ruin her career at any moment.”
In JoJos pop group the band members survive grueling hours of practice. The atmosphere is grueling, as a Rolling Stones article had stated,” It wasn’t a good day if a child didn’t cry”. Many parents of the children in that group had shed light on the trauma and abuse the Siwas are inflicting. Jojo’s mom, Jessalynn Siwa, lacked empathy and humanity to a girl with spina bifida. Spina Bifida is a birth defect where a baby’s spine is malformed and some of the spinal nerves and cord are formed outside the body. Leigha Sanderson is a 16 year old with spina bifida. During practice, Sanderson started bleeding from her belly button and Jessalynn Siwa told her to put a maxi pad on it and keep dancing; Jessalynn didn’t want the costume to be ruined.
Senior Benjamin McCauley said, “She’s literally become the absolute horror she witnessed as a child”
Before JoJo’s rebrand she was dating a girl named Kylie Prew. Then, there was another couple who consisted of Avery and Soph, both famous TikTokers. Avery and Soph broke up when JoJo and Prew broke up. Avery got with JoJo and they were together for a short period of time but JoJo was cheating on Avery with Prew. Avery was furious with JoJo and was calling her out on TikTok in a NSFW way. JoJo responded in the same way which left some bad blood between Avery and JoJo.
An anonymous quote from a freshman said,” Cheating is bad anyway, but both girls should not have acted like that and been childish about their breakup. The response was arguably worse.”
Finally, I’d like to address the part everyones been raving about, JoJos cover of Karma. Karma is a cover because JoJo had bought “Karma” , a song originally made by Brit Smith. There are a lot of musical differences between the two, especially in the genre of music. JoJo’s version of “Karma” is arguably worse than Brit Smith because of the amount of exceedingly inappropriate dance moves, not to mention questionable costume and makeup choice. In the chorus, JoJo has been advertising a certain dance that is not musically sound with the rest of the dance. “Karma” is dance-pop. The choreography is very aggressive for what the music is trying to convey and that takes away from the song a lot. “JoJo should reconsider her career choices”, is what a majority of the internet is saying.
An anonymous quote from a junior said, ”The new video is really weird and kinda made me uncomfortable. I don’t like how JoJo thought that to transition out of her colorful, bow, extra childhood, she had to go a completely opposite route and do stuff that probably should not be available for kids to find. You can grow and change without doing all that weird stuff she did.”
Junior Corrin Santolucito said, ”I’m definitely not a fan of her new look. Her take on corpse paint feels like cultural appropriation. She could be so slay. And yet she looks like garbage.”
